The City That Forgot Spring--The Impact of 22.2°C in Winter in New York City (2007)

The City That Forgot Spring--The Impact of 22.2°C in Winter in New York City (2007)

On January 6, 2007, the high temperature in New York City's Central Park jumped to 72 degrees Fahrenheit (about 22.2 degrees Celsius), flooding the park with people in short sleeves in the middle of winter. The local media reported the temperature as "record warmth," and there were a series of record-breaking temperatures across the East Coast on the same day.

In January 2007, anomalously high temperatures were observed over a wide area from North America to Europe, and the NOAA report also confirmed the remarkable high temperatures in the northeastern U.S. In January 2008, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) was observed over a wide area from North America to Europe.

However, this phenomenon was not transient; NASA/GISS analysis indicates that 2007 was one of the hottest years in recorded history, with warming in the Arctic region being particularly prominent. The feedback between reduced reflectivity and increased absorption due to reduced ice and snow was progressive, and in September of the same year, the Arctic sea ice extent was one of the smallest in recorded history.

Furthermore, 2007 was also the year of the release of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), which reaffirmed global warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases as a "definite fact. The "spring" that came in the New York winter was a harbinger of the era in which climate change began to enter urban daily life.